Tips on being thrifty, but not frugal (The Thrift Book: Live Well and Spend Less - India Knight)

Member Name: cerys82

Product:	The Thrift Book: Live Well and Spend Less - India Knight
Date:	28/07/09 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good tips, written in an entertaining way

Disadvantages: money section is poor

This book was first released in hardback in 2008 at a time when everyone was starting to tighten their purse strings. Knight is a popular journalist for The Times who has previously co-written the "Idiot Proof" diet books. I will say early on, that this is aimed at women.


Knight begins her book by pronouncing her love of 'thrift', emphasis on 'thrift' rather than tightness or frugality. Her philosophy is that 'thrifty' principles can be incorporated with notions of simplicity, and getting back to nature whilst embracing modern ideas and technologies and how these can make life easier. This is refreshing, as some naysayers would otherwise find it all a bit too restrictive and 'earth mothery' otherwise.

As with Knight's journalism, it is presented in a common-sense rather than a preachy way - a lot of her tips make sense not just financially and environmentally but health-wise also; she has a predilection for us to move away from the arguably consumerist attitude that waste is no big deal and everything is disposable. Her view, as is mine, is that it is mutually beneficial to take more responsibility for the money we spend and what we buy with that money so that we make conscious and informed choices. If this all sounds a bit preachy, it really isn't as Knight presents it as a change in ethos which represents a positive lifestyle change rather than a chore. To quote Knight; "What we'd like is some authenticity, some soul in our lives(....) some integrity."

The book includes tips on food, particularly on reduction of waste, shopping well without compromising on nutrition and taste. The book doesn't really go massively in depth with its subjects which makes it not too heavy a read, it rather paraphrases and provides pointers to external references such as useful websites in books. I can vouch for these links being well-informed in useful as I have looked at some of them; in particular, I purchased a recipe book that was recommended called "How to feed your whole family" by Jill Holcombe which is excellent and one of the favourites in my extensive recipe book collection (and one which I am planning to review soon.)
The book isn't patronise and does show empathy that although the principles it contains may fall roughly under common-sense principles , sometimes the demands of modern life and personal situations get in the way and we need a bit of pulling back and re-educating.

I don't want to go into too much detail about what is within the book so that any potential readers will be able to enjoy it for themselves but it does contain sections on the following.
Clothes - prompts towards ethical awareness when it comes to clothes which are dirt cheap, creative solutions
Crafts - eg knitting and patchwork and tips on how to make money from this
Community - tips on celebrating your local community and benefitting from this (these may be more useful for those in cities or large towns)
Having fun - eg weddings and parties. As someone who has been recently organising their own wedding, I found that I could take or leave these tips but there are some nice ideas.
Beauty - here there is a push towards natural products, in particular mineral make-up (which I am still to be convinced by). In this sense, natural products are not necessarily the cheapest but Knight's notion is that it is about getting your money's worth and 'looking expensive', which is not always easy to achieve with cheaper, chemical-laden cosmetics and skincare.
Home - the onus is on making the most of your home by caring and maintaining the things you have rather than replacing items before their natural expiration.
Money - this section is shorter than you would expect and very basic - not the most useful part!
The conclusion is a chapter on 'emotional thrift', which is a nice touch actually although it does lean into self-help territory rather. Emotional thrift is about assessing your psychological priorities.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed reading this book - and see it as something that I will probably dip in and out of rather than a 'lifestyle' bible. It has some useful information, and is nicely written and unpretentious.

Summary: fun, light read with some interesting info